Chapter 11 – Wolf Brawl

As if matching her emotions, the weather turned gloomy and rainy outside as Leal was splashed another cup of coffee by a customer. The female customer had been glaring straight at her the moment she entered the restaurant, and had a different glint in her eyes. Leal didn’t think much about it until the customer failingly acted to slip on the floor and throw her hot drink at her, burning her with the warm coffee. Leal seethed in the burning sensation in her chest, but held it back and unwillingly helped the customer up.

The intentional accident had caught the attention of the other customers, which seemed to be the fourth time this week. After Axel visited her during her shift and made a ruckus, other known female personalities that were linked to him before started visiting too and bugging the employees—specifically, her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Here, let me wipe that for you.”

“N-No, I’m fine. Please, no—” The model in a red halter dress and what seemed to be 6-inch high heels wiped her stained uniform with a tissue in a rather forceful manner, making her slightly wince. The media from outside, despite the rain, started flashing their cameras at them. By just this, Leal knows her face will be in the headlines again.

“No, it’s alright. I didn’t mean to slip and still help you, oh dear.”

“No, Ma’am. It’s really alright. Please tend to yourself,” she formally muttered as she left to grab the mop. The model acted limp with a wince on her face, and returned to her table. She talked to the guy she was with, who looked to be her handler, and stole a few more glances to Leal who was silently mopping the floor clean.

When her shift ended, Leal didn’t have enough tips to hail a cab so she just took the bus. Unfortunately, the bus’ nearest stop was still quite far from Izzy’s condo so she had to walk the long route, and also the route she least wanted to take. It was the dark street, and one of the worst streets in Brooklyn, probably even in New York.

Leal was walking in a steadfast manner, avoiding any drunk men in the streets or anybody else that looked dangerous. When she almost tripped, she looked down and saw her shoelaces untied. Really? At the unluckiest of times?

She sighed before walking under the shade of a closed store’s roof beside a pretty noisy alley, and put down her umbrella before bending down to tie her shoelaces. When she was done, she saw a group of middle-aged men wearing not the best of clothing, laughing at each other, acting very much drunk. One yelled at her.

“Really like it when you are bending over, sweetheart!” His friends laughed and even tapped him in the back.

His words appalled her. Disgusted and horrified, she briskly walked away and bowed her head in shame. She was wearing the plainest of clothes, and for goodness sake, it was so dark! How did he even see her and even managed to catcall her?

She caught a glimpse of a black cadillac slowly driving away from her peripheral vision in the pretty much empty street, but she was too horrified by that encounter to even pay attention to it. Unfortunately, she still lacked tips the following day to afford a cab so again, she had to take the bus and take the long route.

Like she was dumped from the skies an ill-omened prophecy, the drunk men were there in that same alley again and seemed to have recognized her.

The same man yelled to her again. “Grrr! I’d love to own that p u ss!”

“Please, stop,” she whispered as she tightly shut her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears.

It repeated for a few more days, until one fateful night. She was walking again in the dark, as her tips were getting smaller and smaller with the amount of bad reviews their restaurant’s been getting because of famous women making a scene with her.

When he catcalled her again, she thought she finally had enough. Days of avoiding him had been enough time for him to re-think his life choices. Men can’t have too many chances of scaring women off.

“Sir, can’t you stop?” Despite her shaky voice, she managed to voice out her frustration at him and finally face him head on. No more cowardly avoiding him.

The man chortled, shocked by her talking to him. “Jesus, finally! Now you want to f u ck me, oh how lucky I am today!”

Her eyes widened, alarmed that he misunderstood her. “What? N-No, I didn’t say—”

“Come here, you hard-to-get b i tch!” He aggressively yanked her arm, with his friends cheering him on from behind. Then, he raised his other hand and attempted to caress her face. Seeing that move and having flashbacks of her last night with Dion, Leal instinctively flinched and shut her eyes close.

When she felt no impact and his once noisy friends turned silent, Leal grew curious. Then a familiar baritone voice rang in her ears.

“Didn’t you hear the lady decline?”

“Dude, this is a personal matter, why the f u ck are you interfering?!” The half-drunk man tried so hard to shrug off Axel’s tight grip on his raised arm, but failed miserably. The man looked like a skinny teenager in contrast to Axel’s built frame. He towered over him, making him slightly cower in fear. The light from the lamppost behind him also added to his intimidating glare, as well as his all black-suit. But, what was he doing here this late at night?

“Learn to respect women,” he said, glowering at him. The man, acting unfazed, scoffed at him.

With a shaking voice, he threatened, “You see them boys behind me?” He motioned to his friends. “We’re gonna be all up on your *ss and beating the hell out of you if you don’t let go of me right now?”

“Do you see me? You’ll start seeing me in your nightmares soon, no matter what you do.” With his dark and intimidating gaze unwavering, he smirked down at him.

The man’s face paled, as he started shrugging off his arms from his grip again.

“Let’s just beat him up, Ronald!” One of his friends from behind yelled. “He’s toned but he ain’t got no friends to back him up. It’ll be a piece of cake!”

There were approximately a dozen of them, with some even picking up metal tubes and baseball bats. Nervously, Leal tugged on Axel’s sleeve.

From his piercing gaze, Axel’s eyes turned soft when he looked at her. She whispered, “Let’s not fight them. Please?”

“Sure, schatzi,” he whispered back, blatantly ignoring the struggling drunk man in his grasp. “I also don’t pick fights with drunk people. But I know some that do so with one command.”

She frowned. “Who?”

“You’ll see,” he whispered, as he winked at her.

“Stop whispering at each other and let the boy fight us!” They both turned to the slurring yell of the man’s friend. Their group was fully armed with weapons and they used to glare at him in an attempt to intimidate him.

Axel, who boredly gave them a once-over, rolled his eyes and pushed the man he was holding to their side. He staggered back a few steps with Axel’s harsh push, but his friends managed to catch him before he fell to the ground.

“We’ll have a delicious meat after him, for sure,” the drunk men hungrily raked their eyes over her, licking and biting their lower lips. Feeling violated, Leal took a step back and shielded her breast. Axel silently watched, his brows furrowing. Then, he simply raised a hand and motioned something from behind.

“W-What the f u ck—” One of the men exclaimed.

From behind, the lamp post’s light shadowed two bulky figures, getting nearer and nearer. Leal slowly turned behind her, only to see two obnoxiously muscular men in suits and dark shades, slowly making their way to the dark alley.

Every stomp of their feet seemed to have made vibrations in the surface, indicating their weight and power.

“W-Who are those...?” She whispered to him.

“My bodyguards,” he answered.

Leal’s eyes widened. Bodyguards?! They looked like professional wrestlers in suits!

“Please take a few steps back, Sir,” one of the two formally ushered them a few steps back. They silently obliged, and the two replaced them in their position.

“Ah, so they do have backups. Are you ready to be tortured in place for those two?”

Axel’s bodyguards remained unmoving and stiff. They were straightly ignoring the insults and empty threats thrown their way, until the group seemed to have ticked off and just ran to them, with their raised weapons.

The bodyguards threw each of them around like ragdolls, even throwing bodies at each other and somehow playing it off. Leal couldn’t believe the level of violence she was witnessing. Never have she ever seen a fight as aggressive and dominant like this. The bodyguards looked very much trained and skilled to handle a dozen perverted and drunk men on the street like this.

When one of them was thrown again against a brick wall, he whimpered and coughed up blood. Leal’s eyes widened. He’s dying! But what shocked her was when his bones cracked unexplainably and his form started changing. When the two bodyguards saw this, they looked at each other and then to Axel.

“What’s happening?” She asked, clueless of what’s happening in front of her.

“That drunk *ss is a wolf,” he whispered to himself.

When Leal turned to look back on the man thrown in the wall, she was shocked to see an entirely different form. There was no sign of a human in there, but an animal twice as large as its normal size. It was a giant wolf, with elongated arms and legs, that seemed to be able to stand up in its two feet. “W-What—”

Suddenly, he growled, making his other friends look at him. Then, he howled. The sound felt so familiar to Leal’s ears, when it’s very much foreign and she’s sure it was the first time she had heard wolf howls. When his friends heard this, they had their own share of cracking bones and changing forms, which made her froze in utter shock.

“Shift, Epsilons!” Axel yelled from beside her, making her turn her head from the shifting people to him. When she saw who he was yelling at, she saw the two giant bodyguards joining the odd craze of cracking bones and changing forms.

At this point, Leal has no knowledge of what’s happening. The simple catcalling disrespect turned into a series of unfortunate events, completely leaving her out of the picture. Just what exactly is happening?!